How to Share Files Between a Mac (OSX 10.8) and an iPhone or iPad (iOS 7) with AirDrop

Sorry to disappoint, but you can’t. Apple, in their infinite wisdom, decided to create a technology that is locked into separate, parallel worlds. You can Airdrop between Macs, and you can Airdrop between iOS devices such as iPhone and iPad (assuming you are running iOS 7 and have a supported device).

It’s not obvious in the Apple documentation, or on other help sites, that this functionality just doesn’t exist to transfer a file from a Mac to an iPhone or iPad, or visa-versa. So today, when I wanted to transfer a PDF document I’d edited on the Mac to the iPad so that I could have it with me later today for a presentation, I wasted a good half an hour trying to figure out why they wouldn’t talk to each other before I stumbled across a website that pointed out that you can’t.